Volume 9, Number 4, July 2013 - Paper 9 - pp. 445-454

Abstract:

Reliability engineering in the process industry has received a lot of attention in recent years, and many tools and techniques are available, such as Reliability, Availability and Maintainability (RAM) modeling, Reliability Centered Maintenance (RCM), etc.

This paper deals about a case study of a utility plant which is supplying compressed air to the aluminium smelter plant. The compressor has been identified for this study based on the business criticality. There are seven compressor installed in the plant. Each compressor has an integrated dryer unit and all are needed for the plant operation. Weak points have been identified based on RCM study. Each compressor has four failure modes in series and dryer has two failure modes in series. RBD has been created based on the reliability wise connection. The failure and repair distribution have been calculated based on maintenance log data using statistical models i.e. Life Data Analysis (LDA). This information has been used in RBD as block properties. Results of cost benefit analysis have been presented by comparing before and after implementation of strategic maintenance action/task based on RCM analysis.